MAY 26, 1997

Lola Cars in administration

LOLA CARS, one of Britain's best-known racing car manufacturers, has gone into financial administration as a result of the company's failure in F1 earlier this year. Accountant Peter Dunn is now running the business, which is protected from creditors for the next year. He is hoping to be able to find new investors and run the company as a going concern and thus pay back the creditors in full but might also consider selling the company and settling a percentage of the debts with immediate effect.

Lola - which has been in business for 39 years - has the exclusive contracts to supply chassis in Formula 3000 and in the Indy Lights series. It also has a small amount of business left in CART racing.

We hear that there are several parties interested in buying the operation in order to use it to run a Formula 1 program. One name which has been mentioned is that of Prodrive which seems to have been rejected as a buyer for Benetton. There are also rumors that a CART team may wish to take over the business.